We've commissioned a friend of ours Min-Chu to design the garden spaces around our house, including her idea of providing a flower garden for the girls surrounding the oak tree in the front. Our first order of business back in May was to get all the trees trimmed. I, for one, did not know that that sort of thing was supposed to be done on a regular basis: our trees have probably never been trimmed. Then there was the matter of all that lava rock (in place of e.g. mulch) surrounding the house, which you can't easily rake up because of the bushes, so...
the bushes had to go too. (Allow me to point out the stump in Drew's hand.) All told, some dozen bushes and a stunted Japanese maple met their end. [Updated: Drew read this post and said it was more like thirty. He counted.] The reason there isn't more leafy matter around is because Drew got mad at the bushes some weeks ago – for harboring legions of ants – and took a saw to them so that they were pretty much stumps.
The girls found a "miniature tree" and decided to plant and water it: yay, mud.
So yesterday evening, MC came by with a drawing of her plant-plans and told Drew that he can take a break from rock hauling while she shops the end-of-summer plants. She warned us, as I'll warn you, that the entire project will take roughly three years to complete, that is, making sure the plants survive their first winter, etc.
The front as compared to
when we first moved in.
Said operation: from only the front and half of one side of the house. Imagine how much more there is out there!
Do you spy Z? (Click on the picture to enlarge.) There were at least six bushes scattered about along the back wall of the house.
